Art — always in season

Thursday

Aug 30, 2007 at 2:00 AM

You could say that this is late summer. We've even had a few ominously cool, fall-like days of late. The lazy days, as they're called. The corn's coming. The apples are nearly here. Late blueberries and raspberries are finding their way into steamy jars of pectin and sugar.

Ann Bryant

You could say that this is late summer. We've even had a few ominously cool, fall-like days of late. The lazy days, as they're called. The corn's coming. The apples are nearly here. Late blueberries and raspberries are finding their way into steamy jars of pectin and sugar.

The Ogunquit Museum of American Art, however, is gearing up for the second half of its summer just now- propelling the little place into its second set of exhibitions and its biggest fundraising event, the 3rd annual Almost Labor Day Auction. The energy is contagious.

Outside, the OMAA offers cliff top views of Perkins Cove and carefully landscaped grounds dotted with sculpture installations and gardens. Inside, they offer some of the best art to be found in the region. The first half of the summer featured famous painter Jamie Wyeth, prints from Jacob Lawrence, and oils and pastels from Rockland, Maine artist Connie Hayes.

From now to Oct. 31, three great exhibits are showing. Photography by Ansel Adams, paintings by Lincoln Perry, and selected watercolors from OMAA's permanent collection top the summer off with high quality talent you'd expect to see in a large city, but that are conveniently tucked into Perkins Cove.

"We are a small summer museum," said curator Michael Culver, "but we feel that shows like the Adams exhibit and the Jamie Wyeth exhibit demonstrate that we can provide our audience with the same level of excellent shows as larger museum," Ansel Adams is practically a household name, known for taking photographs of untouched parts of the American west, particularly the Sierra Nevada. He was known as much for being an environmentalist as being an awe-inspiring photographer of landscapes. While photography can crop vastness, Adams was capable of communicating a million words of austere grandness in his limited palette of grays, whites, and blacks.

According to Culver, the works at OMAA are on loan from the Mint Museum in Charlotte, North Carolina.

"It is always a delight to have well known artists at our museum," said Culver. "It brings in more visitors to the museum who know their names, and then they fall in love the museum and return again and again." Visitors will fall for the stories told by Lincoln Perry, who spends his summers in Maine and is delighted to show at OMAA. The paintings on show are a retrospective reaching back to the early '80s all the way up to just a couple weeks ago.

In these, bright color whispers rather than boasts about the relationships between subject and subject, or model and painter. It's been said that he's a storyteller as much as a painter, sculptor and muralist, sometimes using multiple panels for a painting.

"Some of the things I do are very narrative in the way that they have context," said Perry in a recent phone interview. "And, they are open to interpretation." It's satisfying to view a painting and fill in the blanks, assuming details about relationships or conversations. Perry doesn't want to tell us what we're seeing, but rather asks questions with his work. In fact, the purpose of all that space is to fully explore an idea.

"They can be a little overpowering for people, but what I like about [multiple panels] is that it's a bigger palette for telling a story," said Perry. "If you have any narrative impulse in painting, you either have to tell a story that everyone knows or you have to tell a story over many panels. I like the idea of having enough room to ask questions, not answer them." Perry will be at the museum on Aug. 28 at 6 p.m. to talk about the works exhibited.

The enthusiasm surrounding the museum is most palpable around its volunteers, some of whom were once wide-eyed sun seekers visiting Ogunquit for its beaches. Perhaps the dazzle of a nationally renowned artist's name drew them through the door, but it's the gravity of its very landscape and hallways that inspires them to become a part of the organization.

Board member and Almost Labor Day Auction co-chairperson Michele LaVerdiere has been a key part of the auction since Culver started organizing it three years ago.

"Getting excited about the auction is easy," said LaVerdiere, "that happens the minute any of us walk into the museum and see the amazing beauty that is presented there inside and out. The landscaping, the grounds, and the view are breathtaking. Even after all these years, I continue to enjoy and be awed by the museum and its beauty." The combination of silent and live auctions makes up the bulk of the money that the non-profit museum needs to fuel its general operating costs, programs, and exhibitions says Culver.

"We are very fortunate to have some dedicated and supportive friends of the museum," he said, noting that around 40 works of art have been donated to the auction from regional, local, and national artists including works by Jamie Wyeth and Wolf Kahn.

Other items and fun things auctioned include garden tours, dinners, wine tastings, antiques, jewelry, and tickets to events like Broadway shows. From the sound of it, it's a little bit fundraiser and a whole lot of shindig.

"Auction night is like Christmas, New Year's, Hannukah, and any great party and celebration all rolled into one," said LaVerdiere.

Culver's work procuring art and committee volunteers' commitment to finding other great items to draw would-be supporters takes months of meetings and planning.

"As always, the auction is a labor of love," said Laverdiere."It truly is a special night planned to keep a very special place going." The Almost Labor Day Auction will be held on Sept. 1. Tickets can be ordered over the phone by calling (207) 646-4909.

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